This was a wonderful franchise. Yes, full of wonders. If could have been and could be again

Russ Grimm is a Redskins legend. His son carries on family name as an assistant coach.

By Kimberley A. Martin

The creek kept them occupied. The boys would carry their fishing poles across the grass as instructed, past the yellow uprights and beyond the back corner of the field. They’d cast their lines, hoping to get a nibble, while their father, sturdy and strong, would watch when he could. But, invariably, work would require his attention.

“He had us fishing behind the park,” Chad Grimm recalled of those excursions with his younger brother Cody. “And then he was like, ‘okay, I’ve got to go to practice. You guys fish for a little bit and come walk through the practice field when you’re done.’”

His dad, Hall of Famer and Washington Redskins legend Russ Grimm, remembers those days too.

“Sometimes you’d have to go to practice and hope they stay out of trouble,” Russ said by phone a few weeks later with a deep, throaty chuckle. “That is until practice was over and they’re covered in mud and everything else. But boys will be boys.”

Decades later, Chad, the oldest of the four Grimm children at age 32, finds himself not far from that very creek, patrolling that same practice field. He now roams the same hallways his father once did, back when Russ was a fixture in Ashburn as the tight ends and offensive line coach, watching film in an office three doors down from the one that belonged to his dad.